King of Tokyo Power Cards: What to Buy First

The openings lesson made the case for Energy early. This one is about what to spend it on. The card row changes every time someone buys or sweeps, so you will never memorize a plan. What you can learn is how to look at any card and know, in a few seconds, whether it is worth your cubes.

Reading a card

Every Power card shows four things, according to the current rulebook:

• Name.
• Cost, in Energy cubes, printed at the top.
• Type: Keep or Discard.
• Effect, the text that does the work.

Keep cards stay face up in front of you for the rest of the game unless something says otherwise. Discard cards take effect once, the moment you buy them, and then go to the discard pile.

That one difference shapes almost every buying decision. A Keep card’s value depends on how many turns are left. A Discard card’s value is fixed: what it does right now.

Five jobs a card can do

Most cards fall into one of these groups. Learn the groups and every new card is easier to judge.

1. Better dice. Cards that add a die or an extra reroll. These help every single turn, whatever you are chasing. A sixth die becoming a seventh, or three rolls becoming four, is the closest thing King of Tokyo has to a sure investment. Extra Head, which adds a die, is the classic example.

2. Staying alive. Cards that block damage or give Life where Heal results cannot. Armor Plating is one: a rules FAQ on Dized explains that you treat each source of damage on its own and ignore any that deals only 1. Others let you leave Tokyo safely or come back from elimination. These cards are what let you hold Tokyo longer than the dice alone allow.

3. More Energy. Cards that pay you cubes for things you already do. They are slow, and they are best bought early, because each one needs many turns to pay back its cost.

4. More damage. Cards that make your Smash results hurt more. The rulebook clarifies three of them:

• Fire Breathing (4 Energy, Keep): when you roll at least one Smash, your neighbors at the table each lose 1 extra Life, even if they are in the same place as you.
• Poison Spit (4 Energy, Keep): every Monster you Smash gets a Poison token and loses 1 Life per token at the end of its turns.
• Shrink Ray (6 Energy, Keep): every Monster you Smash gets a Shrink Ray token and rolls one fewer die per token.

Poison and Shrink Ray tokens can only be removed outside Tokyo, by spending a Heal result instead of gaining 1 Life. Damage cards shine for the Monster who plans to sit in Tokyo, where every Smash hits the whole table.

5. Points now. Discard cards that hand you points or put you in Tokyo. The rulebook’s example is Death from Above (5 Energy, Discard): gain 2 points and take control of Tokyo if you do not already hold it, and every other Monster there must Yield. These are finishers. Early in the game, 2 points rarely beats a card that helps you for ten turns.

What to buy first

When you have Energy in the first few rounds, a rough order works well:

1. Better dice, almost always, if you can afford one.
2. Staying alive, especially if you expect to take Tokyo soon.
3. More Energy, when it is cheap and the game is young.
4. More damage, if you plan to live in Tokyo.
5. Points, mostly near the end.

This is a starting point, not a law. A damage card is worth more at a table of six than at a table of three. A points card is worth everything when it wins you the game this turn.

When not to buy

When nothing in the row does a job you need. Energy carries over between turns. Saving cubes is a real choice, and a full purse next turn may buy a much better card.

When the card needs many turns and the game has few left. If anyone is close to 20 points, a slow Energy card will not pay back.

When the sweep is a gamble with your last cubes. Paying 2 Energy to sweep the row is fine when you have plenty left to spend on what appears. With 3 cubes, it usually leaves you with nothing to buy.

Read the card aloud

Many cards change a rule, and King of Tokyo has a lot of them. When anyone buys a card, read it aloud to the whole table. A few have special clarifications in the back of the rulebook, such as Mimic, Opportunist, and Metamorph, and the beginner mistakes lesson covers the ones that trip people up most.

The habit

Before every purchase, name the job and count the turns. “This adds a die, and the game has a long way to go” is a good buy. “This looks cool” is how your Energy disappears. Later, at Level 3, a lesson on pricing the card row puts real numbers on this instinct.